On Writing

Advocacy is very often about telling stories that struggle to be heard. An experienced advocate and storyteller both, Arnold Zable spoke to Deanne Sheldon-Collins about some of the issues he was to cover in his February 2015 workshop, including the importance and complications of writing for social justice.

ERG: Can you talk a little about how you came to be a crime writer? Have you always been a fan of the genre?

AS: I’ve always loved suspenseful films. For a long time, I was infatuated with Film Noir, and loved trying to pick apart the ways tension was built and released in a story. I have always been a big reader, but was never really interested in crime novels. I think this is because I always saw them as very male and very conventional: a dead woman, a detective, a bad guy. It didn’t interest me.

'Show, don't tell', is a mantra of good writing, but what does that actually mean? How can you tell when you're telling, and how do you know when you're showing? Steph Downing asked Nicole Hayes to enlighten us.

Dinithi Perera interviews Thuy On about criticism in the digital age, the art of reviewing, and and to whom the critic is responsible ahead of her Summer School workshop Reviewing and Literary Criticism.

When Lionel Shriver ignited public debate about cultural appropriation with her 2016 Brisbane Writers Festival opening address, ‘Fiction and Identity Politics’¹, followed by Yassmin Abdel-Magied’s swift rejoinder², I took it personally. Not in a white privilege, why-are-they-trying-to-stop-me-from-writing-whatever-I-want? kind of way, but in a way that made me pause and reflect on my own creative practice.

Mentorships at Writers Victoria

Entries are now open for The Ada Cambridge Writing Prizes (The Adas). For the first time, submissions for prose and poetry are open to all writers who live in Victoria. The Young Ada Short Story Prize remains open to 14-18-year-olds, who live, study or work in Melbourne’s western suburbs. Winners...